What Grows Together Goes Together

Laura

I have recently moved to beautiful Wolfe Island, the largest of the 1000 Islands in the St. Lawrence River. This month’s theme was inspired by venison tenderloin from a deer my new neighbour had hunted and followed to its end in the pond on my property.

Diane’s appetizer course:

I had fun putting together a course that revolved around mushrooms grown at Kelly's Gourmet Mushrooms located just across the road on Wolfe Island. Unlike portobello, button and cremini, which flourish in decomposing organic matter, these mushrooms are grown from spores inoculated on secondary hosts and are touted with a multitude of health benefits.  We toured the operation and saw several varieties: shiitake, blue oyster, pink oyster and lions' mane. I chose some beauties that were too gorgeous to slice and dice for the Epitourist feast, so I sautéed and roasted them as close to whole as possible. The next day I made risotto from the stems and leftovers. I also took some mushrooms home and made a tasty soup. For these recipes, visit my blog. I paired this course with a bottle of Rocca di Fracinello, a super-Tuscan, which was super-yummy with the earthiness of the mushrooms.

Kaarina’s salad course:

I decided on a salad made with things the deer might have enjoyed eating in the wild—beets and apples with lavender dressing, goat cheese and walnuts on a bed of local greens and edible flowers. The recipe is based on a salad I enjoyed at The Hub restaurant in Bloomfield, Prince Edward County. Luckily I found a recipe for it in Food & Drink magazine some time later. Without it, I’d never have been able to replicate the dressing, which is brilliant and which I followed to the letter. I replaced the mozzarella di bufala with a soft chèvre from Cross Wind Farm in Keene, the almonds with walnuts, and the arugula with Cosmic blend of local greens and edible flowers from Kind Organics in Brantford.  I think the arugula from the original recipe works better with the other ingredients but the Cosmic Blend with its colourful petals also feeds the soul on a short November day. I found it at the Big Carrot in Toronto. The most challenging part was sourcing the dry lavender. I bought stuff in Toronto that tasted like soap. After a call out to the rest of the Epitourists, Diane found some in her cupboard but I ended up using Laura’s find of locally-grown, culinary-grade English lavender from the Kingston market. The result was totally worth the search. I paired the salad with Pfaff Pinot Gris. This off-dry, fruity wine was a great match for the flavours in the salad.

Laura’s main course:

Venison can be challenging to cook. It is extremely lean, especially the tenderloin, and can dry out easily. Fortunately I had recently been gifted a sous-vide device, which is a perfect method for keeping meat moist. I cooked the tenderloin for 2 hours at 129 degrees F and finished it with a quick sear on all sides in a very hot pan. I made a sauce based on this recipe but substituted local Wolfe Island wild grape jelly for the Concord jelly. To round out the entrée, I served mashed potatoes made with beautiful Yukon Golds, and sautéed red chard, both purchased from the Kingston Memorial Centre farmers' market. I paired the venison with Ringbolt Cabernet Sauvignon, from Margaret River, Western Australia.


Caroline’s dessert:

As soon as I heard Laura was cooking venison, a memory of my folks feeding carrots to deer popped into my head. My father had built a feeding trough, which he had strategically placed on the edge of the woodlot. In the winter, every day, he filled it with carrots and sometimes apples purchased in 50-pound bags at the Lachute flea market. As the winter night quickly descended, pairs of shiny eyes could be seen in the dark—the feeding deer.

As a last wish to the deer, I set my sights on baking a carrot cake. In my quest for a recipe of choice, I found out that there are two types of carrot cake: the dense and the fluffy. As I am more familiar with the fluffy I chose to go with the unknown. I used a Jamie Oliver recipe from his Cook with Jamie cookbook:

I declare myself a non-baker. I learned a few things when I baked this cake: 1. The importance of using self-raising flour when a recipe calls for self-raising flour 2. I found that including the lime juice in the icing resulted in a runaway finish: Add the zest, leave out the juice 3. Chickens love carrot cake. Especially the icing, which they end up wearing!